


my home has never felt this far

by princessoftheworlds



Series: to build a home [1]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Jack Feels, M/M, Mother-Son Relationship, Pre-Episode: s02e06 Reset, Season/Series 02, Taken By The Rift
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:42:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27728947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princessoftheworlds/pseuds/princessoftheworlds
Summary: When Javic Thane is thirteen, the Rift takes his mother away. In 2008, it gives her back.
Relationships: Jack & Jack's Mother, Jack Harkness & Toshiko Sato, Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Series: to build a home [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2028292
Comments: 20
Kudos: 74





	my home has never felt this far

**Author's Note:**

  * For [transjackianto](https://archiveofourown.org/users/transjackianto/gifts).



> Thanks to Kai for editing and making angstier and essentially turning this into a full verse. Whoop de doo. I should create a Google docs folder for this one now ahahhahaha.

When Javic Thane is thirteen years old, his mother sends him to the market to bring back fresh fish for the rice dish she plans to make for dinner. When he returns, his mother is missing from their small modern home in the complex of houses right next to the beach.

The bag containing the fish and also wrapped sweets - Javic had flirted them away from the merchant’s daughter - falls to the stone floor with a flat _thud,_ but Javic is busy tearing through the house, calling for his mother.

“Mom,” he calls, his shouts becoming more and more terrified. It’s been eighteen months since his father died and Gray was taken, and Javic and his mother rarely let each other out of their sights. In fact, Javic was only sent to the market today out of dire necessity. “ _Mom!_ ”

The kitchen is empty but with leafy vegetables left on the table, all the indications that she’d been preparing to cook. The living room is also empty, the blanket folded neatly on the futon she’s been sleeping on since she can no longer bear to return to her bedroom, which is locked as usual. So is Gray’s. 

Javic’s mother is nowhere in the house, and he runs to the neighbor’s.

“I can’t find her,” he pants, pale-faced and eyes brimming with tears. “I only left for twenty minutes. Where could she have gone?”

The neighbor sets Javic down with a mug of steaming soup until he’s calmed enough to babble the full story, and then they pull the search party together.

In the aftermath of the attack, the small village on the Boeshane Peninsula where Javic and his family lived had bonded together. Many had lost spouses, siblings, parents, children, but they came together the best they could to fill those gaps, to make it so that no one would ever feel the absences. And thus, in wake of another one of their own going missing, they search up and down the beach.

Javic is a part of the parties that climb to the cliff tops and scan the horizon, searching for straggling swimmers. Boats go out to ensure that Javic’s mother has not been pulled beneath the tide. A few even visit the closest city, asking around.

After three days, Javic is forced to admit that his mother is nowhere to be found. That she won’t be found. 

The neighbor wraps him in blankets and allows him to stay with her for several weeks, but she has a family of her own and can’t afford another mouth to feed. Javic is too young to work on a permanent basis, and eventually, he’s taken to the local orphanage.

After several years, he’s old enough to become a soldier and convinces his best friend to join up as well. He comes back alone and damaged from war and can no longer settle into a normal life, so he jumps straight in to sign up for the Time Agency when they visit the Boeshane Peninsula for recruitment.

For the rest of his life, Javic is left wondering and afraid that his mother left him because he wasn’t enough, because he was the one who lost Gray, because he was a sign of their broken family.

Yet Javic wasn’t to know that briefly, a Rift tore a hole in space and time near the Boeshane Peninsula when he was thirteen and swallowed up Karolina Thane.

* * *

The Rift alert comes in like any other.

“There’s a spike near Butetown,” Tosh announces distractedly in the midst of lunch, eyeing her handheld scanner and attempting to manipulate the controls with a sole hand. 

Jack drops his half-eaten slice of pizza to his paper plate and speaks after chewing and swallowing hastily, “What is it?” He wipes his oily hands on his trousers, rolling his eyes when he catches Ianto grimacing at him.

Tosh narrows her eyes at the scanner. “I can’t tell. But it’s… significant. I think… it’s a person.”

The entire team stiffens, silence befalling the boardroom. They all remember the last poor victims pulled through the Rift. Diane, gone. John, dead. Emma, still working in London last time Gwen checked.

“Let’s go,” Jack orders. “The entire team. Gwen, you can handle the personal front. Owen, grab your kit; we’ll need you if they’re injured.”

Equipment is packed into the trunk of the SUV, and it isn’t long before the vehicle is roaring down the streets all the way to Butetown. In his haste, Jack jumps a red light, then another, but Ianto’s too busy holding on to his door handle for dear life to chastise his boyfriend.

They can’t find her at first; she’s laying half-buried in a bush, tan layered clothing ragged and faded from time, her blond curls in disarray, shadowing her face.

Jack’s eyes are narrowed, which doesn’t go unnoticed by Ianto, but he says nothing. He also stays silent when after Owen carefully helps turn the woman onto her side, revealing her face to the team, Jack inhales sharply, eyes instantly filling with tears. He’s paler than a ghost and looks like he’s seen the dead.

She’s in her early to mid-thirties and pretty, tan, with delicate features and brilliant, familiar blue eyes that reflect the oceans.

When she stirs and moans quietly, her slurred words in an unfamiliar language, Jack drops to his knees beside her, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“ _Rest,_ ” he says in Galactic Standard, and the team shifts curiously, as they always do when Jack speaks in a language they do not recognize. “ _We’re getting you help._ ”

“ _Where am I?_ ” she slurs. Then her brilliant eyes flicker upwards, toward Jack, and they widen. “ _Piotr? Papa?_ ”

“ _I’m not Piotr,_ ” Jack replies with a soft smile, sniffling. “ _I’m not your father._ ” A beat. “ _Just lay back, Karolina._ ”

“ _Who are you?_ ” the woman asks, drifting back towards unconsciousness. “ _Why do you look like my father? How do you know my name?_ ”

Jack’s smile grows, his face shadowed with sadness. “ _Because it’s me. Javic._ ”

“ _Javic,_ ” the woman says, eyes widening. She reaches a sluggish hand for Jack. “ _My son. Javic. How are you here?_ ”

“Jack,” Owen warns quietly, but he falls silent when the woman slumps back down to the ground, sleeping.

Jack gathers the woman in his arms, pulling her close to his chest as he stumbles to his feet. “Let’s go,” he tells his team, voice thick.

Nodding, they all fall behind, biting back questions and curious remarks. It’s Jack. He will only tell them on his own time, if he tells them at all. The last one to get in the SUV, Tosh pulls the door shut behind her, her ducked head and teary eyes noticed by no one. Overwhelmed with seeing his mother again, Jack forgot that he’d been teaching Tosh Galactic Standard.

It will never occur to him, and Tosh will not tell him that she knows who the woman is. Of all the times, she owes him his secrecy now.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr [here](http://princess-of-the-worlds.tumblr.com/) or on Twitter [here](https://twitter.com/rajkumarinik). I tweet and reblog mostly Torchwood with occasionally amusing commentary on nonsense. Please come talk to me and tell me if/how much you like my fic or like ask me about it on tumblr; all my schoolwork has become remote now, and I have limited social interaction.


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